In computing networks, an Ethernet interface can receive packets from many different Ethernet connections or flows. In some systems, these flows of packets are processed serially, as they are received by a dedicated processor. In other traditional systems, these flows of packets are processed by peripheral network interface cards that enqueue the packets and/or flows to specific queues that are associated with a given CPU (central processing unit) in a multi-core processor. Network interface cards are expensive however, both in terms of cost, power, and latency, as well as taking up a lot of real estate in a system.
The above-described description is merely intended to provide a contextual overview of current techniques for performing flow pinning in a system on a chip and is not intended to be exhaustive.